Gordon
England, deputy secretary of defense under Donald Rumsfeld and Robert
Gates, has opined in The Washington Post that the sky is once again falling as a result
of proposed Pentagon budget cuts. According to England, “Further
budget cuts will erode our security and put the country back on a path
leading to another ill-equipped and ill-prepared military — as in
2001. It was unacceptable then, and it’s unacceptable now.”

Lamenting
the post–Cold War peace dividend, England claims that even before 9/11
“the Pentagon was simply running out of money” and that “the Navy
did not have enough funding to steam ships or to fly airplanes.”
Really? How does that happen? When the military has less
money to spend, there are basically four ways they can spend less:

It can downsize the force
to reduce manpower costs, which make up the bulk of the defense budget.
However, since size matters, this is the last thing the military would
do. And to be fair, if the military is still being tasked by policymakers
to do everything it was doing before (and it always is), it would
be pretty much impossible to reduce its size and footprint.

It can stop buying new — and always ubër expensive — weapon systems. But this is
an anathema on par with reducing the size of the force. It’s
also virtually impossible to do, since every major weapon systems contractor
has learned to spread the work across as many different states and congressional
districts as possible so that there’s a strong constituency to keep
funding weapon systems (even if they’re not needed) based on the threat
of losing jobs.

It can stop funding research
and development (R&D), but this is the requisite precursor to being
able to buy new weapon systems, so it’s not a favorite candidate. Moreover,
R&D is only about 10-15% of the total defense budget (more
than $675 billion in fiscal year 2013), so it’s not an area where the
largest savings can be realized.

Finally, it can underfund
readiness (essentially, the operations and maintenance costs) and hollow
out the force. Typically, this is what happens whenever the Pentagon
is asked to tighten its belt as a result of reduced budgets. And
it conveniently allows advocates of ever-increasing defense spending
to pull at Americans’ heartstrings using the “support the troops”
mantra to make the argument that reduced defense spending is coming
at the expense of our troops who are in harm’s way protecting our
freedoms.

But
woe is a military that is requesting a paltry $525 billion for fiscal
year 2013, which England points out is only a $102 billion increase
in real dollars compared to the 2001 defense budget of $310 billion
($423 billion when adjusted for today’s dollars). And what’s
driving the need for increased spending? According to England,
“military salaries and benefits have increased almost 90% during
this interval — roughly 30% more than inflation — and now
consume a third of the budget.” Those aren’t typos.
Military salaries and benefits have increased almost 90% —
that is, nearly doubled! By comparison, the national average wage
index rose from $32,921 in 2001 to $41,673 in 2010
(the index for 2011 is not yet calculated), or 26.5 percent. I
wonder how average American workers feel about that (assuming they
still have jobs)?

And
it’s not as if the military is grossly underpaid compared to civilians.
In addition to base pay,
members of the armed forces are eligible
for a basic allowance for housing (BAH) that is not subject to income
taxes. (BAH is determined by location, rank, and whether or not a member
has dependents, but for Texas — considered a low cost-of-living state —
the allowance for officers ranges from about $1,200 per month to
over $2,300 per month.) They are also eligible for a basic allowance
for subsistence (BAS) that is also tax-free (in 2011, $223 per month
for officers and $325 for enlisted personnel). I doubt that most
workers receive similar benefits from their employers. (If these
benefits were provided to the “poor,” many conservatives would deride
them as “welfare.” Also, the military Tricare program is a
government-run program that would be criticized as “socialized
medicine” if it were for the general public.)

So
why do we need a large military that costs so much? England contends
that “in contrast to the post-Cold War period, when our principal
adversary had collapsed, there are many threats to U.S. security today.
The nation is still in a shooting war in Afghanistan and will be through
at least 2013. Iran and North Korea are obvious concerns. There is
tension throughout the Middle East. Out in the Pacific we keep a close
eye on China.”

But
with bin Laden dead, Afghanistan is no longer a direct security threat
to America and, instead, is now another quixotic quest in nation-building.
England doesn’t mention Iraq (a war started on his watch in the Bush
administration), but that country was never a threat. Iran and
North Korea may be “concerns,” but they are not direct military threats to
the United States. The reality is that the United States is in
a relatively safe geostrategic position in the world. We have
friendly governments to the north and south and vast oceans to the east
and west. No country in the world has sufficient conventional
military force-projection capability to attack America. North
Korea has nuclear weapons but no long-range capability to reach the
United States. Even if it did, the vast U.S. strategic nuclear
arsenal is a powerful deterrent — ditto if Iran ever acquires nuclear
weapons. In fact, the only country in the world that poses an
existential threat to America is Russia, which still possesses a strategic
nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the United States (and vice-versa).
Yes, China bears watching (and we shouldn’t be surprised if China
reacts to our policy to “rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific Region” as a threat and takes actions that, in turn,
we construe as a threat), but we still spend as much as 10 times more
on the military than the Chinese. Even if they are trying to catch up,
they have a huge gap to close.

But
none of these are dire threats that warrant a mega military and the
mega spending required to support it. Moreover, the American taxpayer
doesn’t need to bear the burden of spending nearly as much on
defense as the rest of the world combined when we have rich allies capable of paying
for their own security needs.

Gordon
England would have us believe that the sky is falling. But one
of the morals of the tale of Chicken Little is not to believe everything
you are told — especially in this case, since the proposed cuts don’t
mean reducing the current defense budget. I’ll agree with England that “the
nation’s economic problems can’t be solved on the backs of the military,”
but another moral (depending on the version of the tale and its ending)
is to have courage. In this case, we need the courage to be serious about reducing defense spending as part of reducing
total government spending.

Is england implying that our military being "ill-equiped and ill-prepared" was the reason planes crashed into our buildings? Would more useless sophisticated weaponry stopped hijackings with box cutters?

I guess it's a bad thing to be ill-equipped to start a war of choice? If the military wasn't properly equipped for a protracted desert war, maybe someone should have raised their hand and asked why are we doing this when we already know we're not ready?